Imperial NGOs, Drugs and Cynical Geopolitics

Imperial NGOs, Drugs and Cynical Geopolitics

Gearóid Ó Colmáin

Part IIIof Narco-Socialist Cartel: Morales, the Pope and the Chaos in Bolivia

‘Between October 2003 and July 2005, scores of factory and unemployed urban workers and Indian peasants were killed in the struggle for the nationalization of petroleum and gas, Bolivias’s most lucrative economic sector. Two presidents were overthrown by mass uprisings in two and a half years for defending foreign ownership of the energy resources. Evo Morales did not participate in either uprising; in fact, he supported the hastily installed neo-liberal President Carlos Mesa until he, too, was driven from power.” James Petras, Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants, p. 197

No one with any knowledge of Marxism had ever really taken Evo Morales seriously. It had always been clear he was a fake socialist. Yet now, since his ousting on 11 November, he’s been held up as a working-class hero.

When he took power in 2006, Morales failed to change the flexible labour laws which had been imposed by previous neoliberal regimes. In fact, he allowed the ultra-capitalist National Business Council to run the country for him. Morales himself was not a particularly brilliant student. He flunked out of college and has never shown any particular talent, other than football and rabble-rousing. In fact, it has been claimed that he is functionally illiterate.

Morales took a salary drop in order to justify imposing economic austerity. For a man of his wealth, a salary drop meant nothing. Multinational corporations continued to plunder the economy under his reign and the minimum wage remained pathetically low. While there was considerable opposition to his rule from oligarchs in Santa Cruz such as the Croatian-born businessman Branco Marinkovitch, Petras says Morales often made up stories about how the CIA was trying to assassinate him, plots of which the Interior Ministry was unaware.

When Morales took power in 2006, the Minister for Water, Mamami refused to expel the multinational Aguas del Illimami from the country, while the Minister for Education, Félix Patzi refused to provide the funds for the creation of a teacher’s college in Al Alto.

In fact, Patzi was much more concerned about removing the Catholic Church from education. Thanks to his efforts, the Catholic Church was disestablished as the state religion in 2009. This is an important point which we will deal with in another article.

The NGO complex

Kathryn Ledebur is the director of the Andean Information Network, which was set up in 1992 by a group of Americans apparently concerned about the effects of the American “War on Drugs” on the Chapare coca-growing region of Bolivia. It got considerable help from the US embassy in La Paz and led to a Human Rights Watch report condemning the US war on drugs in the region.

This created favourable conditions for the rise of Morales in the 1990s. The US war on drugs had some limited success in Colombia where the Medellin Cartel was busted, but it favoured cartels in Mexico. By the time the Andean Information Network began, the Bolivian government was implementing measures to massively reduce coca production, replacing it with substitute crops. Had they succeeded, Cocaine production might have been greatly reduced.

But human rights came to the rescue of the cartels!

Morales made trips to North America in the 1990s where he met important NGOs and activists — in the service of US imperialism. It was largely due to the help of these NGOs that he gained power. His “21st-century socialism” would be more about indigenous rights than class struggle and would receive extensive support from elite-funded media outlets such as Democracy Now!

Ledebur is a member of the Bolivia Working Group, a branch of the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA). WOLA a major US foreign policy think tank which is funded by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Insitute, Atlantic Philanthropies, Heinrich Boll Foundation, W.K. Kellog Foundation, Oxfam America and many other wealthy liberal foundations. This is the imperial power network behind many of the New Left leaders in Latin America.

On the board of WOLA is Juan Gonzalez, Associate Vice-President of the Cohen Group. The Cohen Group, a business advisory firm with 71 offices in 30 countries throughout the world, was formed by former US Secretary for Defense William Cohen in 2001 in order to help multinationals expand overseas.

Key employees of the group include James Mathis, former Secretary of Defense and Commander of US Central Command; Mark Grossman, former US Secretary of State for Political Affairs; and Joseph Ralston, former United States Airforce General, NATO Supreme Allied Commander and Vice-Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs of Staff. Now, there’s a nice bunch of far-left, radical anti-capitalists!

Also on the board of WOLA sits Dr. Paz y Paz, director of the Mexico and Central America programme, which is run by USAID — a well-known front for the CIA.

The chair of the board is Nancy Belden, director of Belden Russonello Strategists LLC. According to the company’s website,

“Belden Russonello Strategists LLC conducts survey and focus group research and provides research-based message development and communications consulting.

Since 1982, BRS has helped non-profits, political campaigns, news media, and other clients understand the relationships between issues and motivations for action – whether it is rethinking policy, attracting new members, or changing attitudes and behaviour.”

Belden Russonello Strategists specialise in providing focus group research which makes the public believe Catholics want abortion. They have done studies for the Soros-funded Catholics for Choice.

Many of the “statistics” pushed on the public by the media come from these organisations who are specialists helping to “change attitudes and behaviour.”

As the ovine instinct in humans is strong, people are usually swayed to support a cause if they are told that most people support it.

The vice-chair of the board is Marlene Johnson, former CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. The current CEO is Ester Brimmer, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and daughter of the former governor of the Federal Reserve.

The most important person on the board is the man whose job it is to make sure all this left-wing advocacy has capital. Bob Varenik is Director of Programmes for the Open Society Justice Initiative — Soros again!

It’s a small, small world in the growth industry of leftist alt-globalism.

Given the opposition to abortion in Catholic Latin America, having these specialists in social engineering supporting leftist regimes is extremely important.

It would be difficult to find organisations which are more ruthlessly capitalist and anti-working class! You will read and learn a lot about US imperialism from the Cuban, Venezuelan and Bolivian media but you will never understand who the real imperialists are, nor how they operate; and there’s a very simple explanation for that!

The “left-wing” of US foreign policy in Latin America is largely due to the efforts of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which was set up by Orlando Letelier and Richard Barnett. Barnett was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and helped found the Institute of Policy Studies in 1963 with generous funds from Jewish bankers Warburg and Samuel Rubin.

Rubin helped promote “left-wing” intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky in America and Susan George in France. It was the birth of what today is referred to as alt-mondialism or alt-globalism, that is to say, capitalism dressed-up up as opposition to capitalism in the service of One World Government.

Larry Birns

Larry Birns directed COHA from 1975 to 2018. He was also a member of the prestigious Institute of Strategic Studies in London, one of the most important policymakers of the Anglo-American intelligence community. Birns collaborated with Noam Chomsky on a book about Latin America. Chomsky owes much of his “greatest intellectual in America” status to the efforts of these imperialists.

COHA used to get its funding from the Judith Chiara-Loeb from the Kuhn-Loeb banking dynasty. Her father ran a company which became the predecessor of American Express, and her mother came from the Lehman Brothers dynasty.

What we see here are Jewish intellectuals funded by Jewish money promoting Jewish interests in Latin America dressed up as “21st-century socialism.” To the public, these people are donating to charity and philanthropy, whereas in reality, they are simply using their money to acquire political power.

Leftist racketeering

Although I have not been able to find any link between them, the social function of intellectuals such as Larry Birns and the infamous Jewish mobster Shonder Birns have a striking similarity.

Shonder Birns was involved in every kind of racketeering and fraudulence from the 1920s to his death in 1975. But he would also use some of the money he got from crime for public relations and good deeds.

Shonder Birns

Jewish leftism is a form of intellectual racketeering. The verb racket comes from the French rechasser, to strike the ball back. When you follow fake leftists, you think you are striking the ball at the imperialists, whereas it is the imperialists who are striking the ball at you.

The Centre for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) has been repeatedly cited by the fake alternative media as a credible source of information on Latin America. The centre was set up by economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot in 1999. CEPR is funded by George Soros.

A global government under the control of economists would give them absolute power. “Socialism” is a means to that end. That is why, for someone like Soros, there is really no difference between socialism and capitalism: one form of political economy can be harnessed to promote the other, so as to increase the power of the oligarchy.

You will notice when you read reports for MintPress News from La Paz by Soros-funded Code Pink activist Medea Benjamin that these leftists operate exactly like the neoconservatives: they constantly quote and refer to themselves. It is what one might call a ghetto-mentality.

As the United States is promoting indigenism and sexual perversion in Latin America, it is unlikely their puppet Luis Fernando Camacho will change much. What is really being changed is Bolivia’s geopolitical orientation, away from Moscow and Beijing and towards Washington.

By now, readers will be surprised that someone who defended the Bolivarian revolution for 20 years would appear to be supporting a pro-US imperialist agenda in Latin America. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Rather, it seems to me that while the US clearly and openly opposes the left-wing governments in Latin America and uses lies and disinformation to backup an imperialist agenda, there is a deeper structure of power operating above the left-wing/right-wing paradigm. It is a power structure which, though global, is hidden. It is this structure which we are attempting here to uncover.

Sean Penn’s circle of friends

It is now being claimed that Morales has links with the Mexican drug lord El Chapo. Morales is currently in Mexico where he has received political exile. According to investigative journalist Richard Marcelo Romero Cossio, Morales was put in power by the CIA in order to push a pro-indigenous agenda in Bolivia and to save the cocaine trade from destruction.

Dr Alberto Barcena Perez of the CEU San Paulo University in Madrid says that Morales was approved by the Rockefeller Freemasonic Lodge in New York to spread a left-liberal, anti-Catholic agenda in Bolivia.

It is not a secret that the CIA funds indigenism in Latin America. The National Endowment for Democracy, one of its front organisations, has regular programmes for “indigenous rights”.

US Hollywood actor, Sean Penn is a friend of Morales. The former Bolivian president even appointed him as ambassador in October 2012 in negotiations with Chile over Bolivian access to the Pacific Ocean. He was also appointed ambassador for the defence of coca leaf chewing.

Penn caused controversy in January 2009 when he interviewed El Chapo, drug lord of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel, in Mexico for an article published in Rolling Stone Magazine. Penn is against the war on drugs and claims he was attempting to open up a “conversation” about how to deal with the US drug epidemic.

Drug abuse in the United States is higher than ever. Even Penn’s son was arrested for narcotics possession in April 2018.

Jacob Ostreicher

When Morales came to power in 2006, there was an increase of 93% in the formation of off-shore companies in Panama.

One of the beneficiaries of this tax-evading scheme was Jewish-American businessman Jacob Ostreicher. He was arrested in June 2011 on orders from the Bolivian Interior Ministry for money laundering. Ostreicher was imprisoned in Palmasola Prison.

Ostreicher’s business partner in Switzerland was lawyer Andre Zolty, who works for the majority share-holder for Emaxon Finance International. According to investigative journalist Keith Harmon Snow:

“Emaxon Finance International is a real gem, one of these octopuses of mining tangled up with interlocking companies and subsidiaries based in specious geographical offshore “tax havens” that work to shield from prosecution people who are responsible for money laundering, weapons and drugs operations, assassinations and other terrorism…. Emaxon lists as its address an office in Montreal, Canada, but Emaxon’s majority shareholder is listed as FTS Worldwide, a nebulous global corporation whose business address is that of a firm of lawyers, Mossack Fonseca & Company, in Panama City. FTS Worldwide is registered with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission to lawyer Andre Zolty of Geneva Switzerland “

Harmon-Snow shows that Zolty’s client, Emaxon Finance International, is linked to some of the wealthiest oligarchs in Israel and the United States, as well as the Israeli military and intelligence community. It is controlled by billionaires Dan Gertler and Chaim Leibovitz. Leibovitz is a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former ultra-right-wing Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who once said there were no innocent people in Gaza.

But wait a minute, isn’t Evo Morales a staunch anti-Zionist? How is it possible that a left-wing, socialist state was inviting Israeli companies linked to war criminals to invest?

Before Ostreicher’s case could be properly investigated, the US corporate media stepped in and, instead of providing its viewers with the important information above, pleaded Ostreicher’s innocence.

Ostreicher shared an important friend with the Bolivian president: Sean Penn. The Hollywood actor promptly contacted Morales demanding that the US citizen be released, accusing the Bolivian Interior Ministry of corruption. Morales took swift action and fired the ministers responsible for Ostreicher’s arrest. He subsequently escaped to the United States with possible assistance from Penn, Morales and US government agencies.

If Ostreicher had been convicted, the spotlight would have turned on the entire Israeli military-industrial-media-intelligence complex; and that would be anti-Semitic!

The Bolivian government officials responsible for Ostreicher’s arrest had no idea who they were dealing with. On 3 May 2012, a rally was held outside the Bolivian Embassy in New York by thousands of Jews. The rally was organised by ultra-right-wing senator Dov Hikind. Some held up banners saying “We are all Jacob Ostreicher!”

According to Jewish writer Stephen Lendman, Israel is a major hub of global cocaine smuggling and money laundering. How is it possible for a left-winger like Penn to be so friendly with a man defended by ultra-Zionists? Hikind even tried to get Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ banned for anti-Semitism. Yes, that’s right: Hikind believes God is anti-Semitic! He opposes online censorship — of Jews, too. He sued Ocasio Cortez for blocking him on Twitter!

Could there be ethnic reasons for Penn’s defence of Ostreicher? Penn’s father was Jewish. Jewish leftists in America such as Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman have been major cheer-leaders for Evo Morales. They are joined by scores of Jewish leftists in Europe who salivate at the idea of the innocent “man of the people” Morales opposed by “Christian fascists” – ignoring the fact that the Bible-brandishing opposition to Morales is, in fact, largely Judeo-protestant – and backed by Israel.

Who gave Senn Penn the right to interfere with the legal proceedings of another sovereign state? What exactly was Penn trying to achieve in Mexico by interviewing El Chapo? Cocaine production in Bolivia has sky-rocketed since Morales took power. Is it any surprise that a likely CIA-plant who used “anti-racism” to sabotage the war on drugs would seek refuge in Mexico, where President Andres Manuel Obrador Lopez (AMLO) is said to be considering legalising drugs?

I have shown elsewhere that European governments are now cooperating closely with companies implicated in the global drugs trade. Does that surprise you, dear reader? Does it surprise you that governments who want our children to choose their gender and be entertained by transvestites should also be encouraging experimentation with drugs? Is it not the case that leaders such as Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Leo Varadkar and others — all of them sexually ambiguous– have admitted to using hard drugs? Are they not presented as paragons of virtue by the bourgeois press?

Leftist paragons of virtue

Jann Wenner in 1977. Photo by Jean Pigozzi

Since its inception, Rolling Stone magazine has been at the forefront of elite-funded social engineering in the United States. In the 1960s, journalists such as Hunter Thomson glorified the use of drugs and pushed for total legalisation. You will notice in many liberal media reports on El Chapo that he is being compared to Robin Hood. We are told that he is a folk hero in the areas he controls, creating jobs and investing in “education”. The idea is being implanted in the public mind that we need to, in Penn’s words, “open a conversation” about drugs. Did Penn open a conversation with his own son about drugs?

There are good reasons why Rolling Stone magazine would want to “open up a conversation” about drugs. According to the New York Post, during the 1960s, “employees even dealt drugs at the office. Among the biggest partiers were Jann Wenner, the editor, who snorted coke and downed vodka at the office.”

Penn himself is believed to have had a serious drug problem, and, according to the Daily Beast, almost beat his wife Madonna to death. This is the man who wants us to have a “conversation about drugs”… This is the man Morales appoints as a “special ambassador”… Here’s how the Daily Beast describes Penn, having a conversation with Madonna while on drugs.

“Penn was extremely violent toward his ex-wife Madonna when the two were married in the 1980s. Once, in June 1987, he allegedly caused the pop superstar to be hospitalized after hitting her across the head with a baseball bat. But Madonna, who remained protective of her husband, refused to press charges since Penn was already facing 60 days in jail for assaulting a film extra. Things got even uglier on December 28, 1989. According to a police report filed by Madonna, Penn scaled their Malibu home that afternoon, found Madonna alone in her bedroom, and told her that he owned her “lock, stock, and barrel.”

According to reports, “When she told him she was leaving the house, he tried to bind her hands with an electric lamp and cord. Screaming and afraid, Madonna fled from the bedroom. What followed was a nine-hour ordeal which left her deeply shaken. Penn chased her into the living room, caught her and bound her to a chair with heavy twine. Then he threatened to cut off her hair.”

He allegedly “smacked and roughed up” Madonna while she was tied to a chair, and then left for a few hours to buy more booze—leaving his then-wife bound and gagged—only to return and continue terrorizing her. He only agreed to untie her after she “agreed to perform a degrading sex act on him,” and then fled the house, got in her car, and raced to the sheriff’s office—eventually stumbling inside.”

Charming fellow, Sean Penn!

Drugs are ruining the lives of America’s working class. A genuinely revolutionary politics in Bolivia would have burned all the coco and implemented a radical agricultural reform to promote a viable alternative. Instead, Morales turned the country into a drug factory.

The geopolitics of regionalism and block formation

Morales’s geopolitics would certainly have upset Washington. He forged contacts with competing powers of Russia, China and Iran, thereby strengthening the country’s geopolitical alliances. His right-wing oppositionists, however, seem to favour a return to more subservience to Washington. As a counter-force to leftist indigenism, the CIA has been pushing nutty evangelical churches all over Latin America. They now form the basis of the anti-Morales faction in power. One CIA operation has been replaced by another.

Washington is undoubtedly behind the recent regime change in Bolivia, and it is likely now that unrest will engulf the nation. There is a geopolitical contradiction here which is quite intriguing. As I have pointed out before, Russia appears favourable to regionalisation in the European peninsula, as Moscow and Beijing want to promote the Eurasian Union whose future administrative capital will be Astana in Kazakstan. But Russia and China are a factor of stability for national sovereignty in other countries, namely Latin America.

Leftist moral degeneracy is coupled with national sovereignty and good relations with Moscow and Beijing. On the other hand, a more traditional, albeit cynical, stance on morality from the US-backed Evangelical right in Latin America is promoting policies which could lead to the Balkanisation of Latin American states.

For example, there is a strong drive for separatism in the wealthy Santa Cruz state. In other words, Europe, hitherto a colony of the United States, is breaking up and dissolving slowly into the Eurasian Union as China’s power expands throughout what Halford Mackinder called the “World Island.”

In Latin America, a converse geopolitical restructuring is taking place. Washington is reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine and far-right regimes are slowly reacting to decades of elite-backed fake leftist regimes. Washington appears to favour balkanisation of Latin American states.

Regardless of whether the pro-US right or anti-US left is in power in Latin America, control remains in the hands of corporate and financial elites. We will never be able to address the real problems facing the world until we reject the artificial and infantile left/right political paradigm. As long as the choice is between leftist social degeneracy and rightist social irresponsibility, the Iron Heel of the oligarchy will continue to crush the working man.

In the next article, we will discuss who the right-wing people in power in Bolivia are and what they will do.

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